Anna Hamilton Phelan

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Anna Hamilton Phelan is an American screenwriter .

Life

Phelan grew up in Pennsylvania . She graduated from Emerson College in Boston in 1965 with a Bachelor of Arts in theater studies . She initially aspired to a career in theater in New York City and soon began writing monologues for herself and later for other actors. After a few years in New York, she moved to Los Angeles . There she was seen as an actress in small roles on television, although in retrospect Phelan described her performance as "not particularly good".

Phelan combined her collected monologues with texts by feminist authors and went on tour with the solo piece Corsages and Ketchup in the early 1970s. After that, she started a family and withdrew from acting completely.

During an apprenticeship at Harbor General Hospital , she met the teenager Roy L. Dennis (1961–1978), who suffered from craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, and later also his mother, Florence “Rusty” Tullis (1936–2006), from whom she received the rights for her life story Son acquired. From then on she concentrated on writing scripts and first attended two courses with screenwriting guru Syd Field . During the second course the screenplay for The Mask was created , which was filmed in 1985 by director Peter Bogdanovich . Her debut work earned Phelan a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the Writers Guild of America Awards .

Then she received an offer from MCA Motion Picture Group Chairman Frank Price to adapt the autobiography of the behavioral scientist Dian Fossey , which she initially refused because she saw no story for a script in the strongly scientific text. After Fossey's murder, she reconsidered her decision and wrote the script, which Michael Apted filmed as Gorillas in the Mist . Working on the film, which also hit the box office, earned Phelan a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 1989 Academy Awards, along with Tab Murphy .

In the 1990s she made films like In Love and War , Durchgeknallt and Chains based on her scripts . Together with Ronald Bass , she wrote the script for the film biography Amelia , which deals with the life of the aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart .

In March 2008 the musical Mask celebrated its premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse , with Phelan adapting her book for the musical himself; the music was written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil .

Anna Hamilton Phelan is married with a son and a daughter.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Marsha McCreadie: Women Screenwriters Today: Their Lives and Words . Praeger Publishers, Westport, 2006, ISBN 978-0275985424 , page 159.
  2. ^ A b c Syd Field : Selling a Screenplay: The Screenwriter's Guide to Hollywood . Delta Trade Paperbacks, 1989, ISBN 978-0440502449 , page 226 ff.
  3. ↑ a b c Michael Buckley: Stage to Screens: Gallagher, Abraham, Phillips, Phelan, Evigan and Bucchino . In: playbill.com of April 7, 2008.
  4. ^ The 61st Academy Awards 1989 . In: oscars.org, accessed June 21, 2020.
  5. ↑ Andrew Gans: Mask Musical Will Make World Premiere in Pasadena . In: playbill.com from August 27, 2007.
personal data
SURNAME Hamilton Phelan, Anna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH 20th century